


Sweet the Sting

by Deccaboo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-14
Updated: 2008-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 23:49:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deccaboo/pseuds/Deccaboo





	Sweet the Sting

John Winchester often dropped by the Roadhouse after a hunt. He knew the boys would be safe with Pastor Jim or their Uncle Bobby until he could get back and the Roadhouse with its share of grizzled, war-torn hunters was the right place to rest up, share stories and wind down the adrenaline so's when he came home to his boys he wasn't still wired from the hunt and could be the father Mary would have wanted him to be.

Bill Harvelle's wife Ellen was dressing down a hunter who had dared prop his feet up on her upholstery and John smirked. She was a woman a hunter needed, strong enough to keep the men away from the liquor and the demons from the door until her husband came, soft enough to soothe the pain that came in the night; all the hunters were plagued with nightmares and John could see in her eyes that Ellen's strength was Bill's source of power.

Bill slid a second bourbon towards John down the bar that stayed clean and fresh no matter how many grimy hunters propped it up of an evening, and John knocked his first clean back, enjoying the sweet sting as the alcohol slid down his throat and sent fire through his veins. Bill knew what John was going through, in a glance they could share their story and not have to open their mouths. Theirs was a mute friendship but a warm one, as warm as two hunters who had families to protect could be.

John knew Bill wouldn't get too close, he had wife and daughter and the girl wasn't even Sammy's age. Bill knew the score with John too, knew only just enough about John's boys to share in John's happiness when the older boy popped his first dark entity and John's frustration when the younger one wouldn't stop asking damn questions, but Bill didn't know enough to put them in danger. That was the hunter's way. If they only knew first names and no locations, a possessed partner couldn't put you in danger, destroy your family. Many of them wouldn't even share what brought them into the business in the first place.

John trusted Bill and could sense that Bill held him in the same regard, John was probably the only hunter who'd ever held Bill's baby girl, the only hunter trusted enough to be her godfather. They'd had an informal baptism one night after a hunt for a demon possessing unbaptised babies. Bill's wife Ellen, attractive when she was relaxed and sour when Bill was on a hunt, held baby Joanna Beth as Bill read aloud from the Book of Common Prayer and John had sprinkled some of Pastor Jim's finest holy water over the angel's head and John felt a little bit of him soften, the part that had hardened up gradually ever since Mary's death.

John watched Bill checking the clocks, it was his routine before setting out on a hunt. "Night, Bill," John called and Bill nodded back. No one ever said 'good luck', or 'see you when you get back.' Hunters lost too many people to rely on luck and to expect anyone to come back from all their hunts.

John tipped the second bourbon down his throat, slung his oilskin over his shoulder and walked behind the bar to the little room under the stairs he called home on the road. Before he could close the door, John had to sit down on the bed and it took a little negotiating between his duffel bag and oilskin coat before the door would close completely. The little camp bed was rickety but warm enough that John didn't have to wear his worn flannel shirt or his damp jeans, so he pulled them off roughly and tossed them in the direction of his bag. He settled back on the flat pillow and scratchy camp blanket and breathed in the familiar scent of the Roadhouse. Against all probability it smelt of fresh cut grass and strawberries rather than the beer-breath stench he would have expected of a tiny closet room behind the bar of a roadhouse. He closed his eyes a couple times and ran his hands over his scratchy stubble, but John couldn't relax enough to sleep. He tossed and turned, pulled the scratchy sheets up to his chin and then threw them off again. John was restless and didn't even relax when his fingers latched instinctively around the handle of his gun.

The hairs on his arms were standing on end and for the first time staying at the Roadhouse, John felt on edge. He listened intently for any noise coming from the upper storeys of the house, but there was nothing, he could hear nothing except for the sound of his own breathing and he had taught himself how to breathe so quietly it couldn't be immediately discernible to anything hunting him. When the door to his closet room opened with a loud creak, John damn near pumped the perpetrator full of buck shot. It was Ellen Harvelle.

"Winchester!" She cried, her hand reaching up to her long pale throat in shock. "What the Hell?"

"My God, Ellen, Ellen, I'm so, so sorry…" John stuttered and tried to get to his feet but banged his head on the low ceiling of the closet room and ended up back down on the camp-bed that desperately wanted to fold up around him. John felt like a royal idiot trapped in the centre of a folding camp bed with a shotgun in his hand and his bare feet flailing around.

He could hear the thud of her feet as she tore away from the closet room as fast as she could. John negotiated his way out of the camp bed trap and followed the sound of Ellen's feet into the bar area where she stood, her eyes blazing, and John found himself staring down the long length of a katana blade. He raised his shotgun in shock and the two were locked in a face off in the centre of the bar.

They were so intensely concentrated on their weapons that John barely noticed Ellen's short nightshirt and Ellen barely noticed John's vest and shorts. Ellen went first. "Why did you almost kill me?" She inclined her head towards the bar where a small shot of clear liquid waited. "Down that."

John's heavy brows twitched. "I'm not possessed Ellen."

"Put down the gun, down the shot and we'll see." She replied, steely. Her katana hand was barely moving but John's gun arm was twitching with tension, once this mistake was over he was determined to ask her how she learnt to do that.

John kept the shotgun level with Ellen's katana, but edged towards the bar and downed the holy water shot in one gulp. He raised the glass as the water had no effect on him. Ellen lowered her katana, but not enough that John could relax.

"What were you doing in my closet?" Ellen countered, pointing at John with her katana.

"Bill said you'd put me up for the night, 'fore I go home to my boys in the morning." John said, feeling secure enough to rub his face with his hand and set his shotgun down on the bar.

"Bill's gone on a hunt. He'd never leave a hunter in our house without him being here." Ellen replied, her voice still harsh, but she laid her katana down on the bar too.

As a slight breeze guttered into the bar room, John painfully realised he was in his underwear and the temperature was dropping. He wrapped his arms around his body and thought wistfully of the warm folded-up camp bed in the closet room. "He did this time, Ellen." John replied feeling a little annoyed that Ellen refused to believe him.

"Bill's gone on a hunt." Ellen replied, taking a step closer to John. Her expression was different, she was usually as bitter as a spinster sucking lemons when Bill was in probable danger, but Ellen looked peaceful compared with her dangerous demeanour a few moments ago. In the night breeze coming in from under the bar door, Ellen's scent wafted gently towards John. Cut grass and strawberries. He drank in her scent absentmindedly as she moved closer towards him. He didn't even hold back when she stroked his black stubble with her long fingers and traced her fingertips across his lips, which quivered ever so slightly at her touch.

As Ellen rose up on tiptoe to meet John face-to-face, he found himself instinctively encircling her waist with his arms and feeling her long hair brush against his forearms. He closed his eyes and pretended it was Mary pressing her long body against his and it was her long blonde hair tickling his arms. He was jerked out of his reverie by Ellen's hungry kiss which was nothing like he had experienced from Mary. He responded more than eagerly to Ellen's hot mouth and the insistent tugs on his head from where she had wound his thick hair around her fingers.

There was a small pang in the pit of John's stomach when he remembered that Ellen was his friend's wife, but strangely he rationalised it to himself quicker than he thought he ever would have -- Bill wasn't here, he had gone on a hunt. John parted from Ellen's kiss with a jolt and she moaned in disappointment. She knocked his gun and the shot glass off the bar with her katana and hopped up on the bar, her nightshirt rucked up around her waist, her shock of pale skin gleaming in the darkness. She caught John's hand in her smaller one and guided it to her thigh, using her legs to draw him closer to the heat of her and pulled his head down, capturing him in her hungry, desperate kiss once again.

John hadn't tasted a kiss in such a long time and he wasn't ashamed when Ellen seized the waist of his shorts and he let a hiss of pleasure escape from his lips. John whimpered when Ellen reached inside his shorts and caressed him, feeling his heat radiate in her hand the way it never felt in moments he managed to snatch by himself, the way he had never felt since Mary's death. With a happy moan, Ellen slid down on to John and they both cried out in pleasure bucking against each other, against the bar. As he thrust into her, sealing Ellen between his bulk and the wooden bar behind her, John felt freer than he had felt in a long time, he felt faint and dizzy with pleasure Ellen's ragged moans and pants dragging cries of pleasure out of the very base of him. Pressure coiled deep in John's spine and he dug his fingernails deep into Ellen's willing flesh. He was so ready, she felt so good and slick and wet around his…

"HEY!"

John nearly dropped Ellen, breasts heaving, on to the floor. Ellen Harvelle stood in the doorway to the bar, a revolver in her hands. She had it trained, not on him, but on herself, the Ellen in his arms he had pinned against the bar. John's ardour dropped down into the pit of his stomach and he kept his eyes trained on the Ellen in the doorway. He didn't even want to consider what it was he had been doing.

"Go back to Hell, BITCH!"

Ellen Harvelle didn't even blink before unloading three rounds into the Ellen in John's arms. There was a high-pitched, unnatural scream and an unattractive gurgling noise, a rush of intense heat against John's skin and then silence. Uncomfortable silence.

Ellen rushed towards him, a sensible thick dressing gown wrapped around her and John wrenched up his shorts and turned away, thoroughly ashamed. "Winchester? John? Are you ok?"

"I'll…I'll be fine," he choked out. "What was she…uh…that?" He felt his skin burn, not the afterglow of intense sexual pleasure, but the intense burning of embarrassment and shame.

"She was a succubus. Bill has his hunts, I have mine." Ellen offered as a way of explanation. "She's been prowling around here and she killed a couple of good friends a while back. I'm sorry you got caught up in it."

"Uh, right." John cleared his throat, wrapping his arms around himself, feeling the cold much more than he should have done. Ellen took off her dressing gown and offered it to John, he was unsurprised to see the real Ellen was wearing thick flannel pyjamas under her gown. He shrugged off the gown and handed it back to her.

"Oh stop being such a big damn hero, John, and put the damn gown on." Ellen commanded, draping the warm gown over his shoulders and going behind the bar to pour out two glasses of bourbon. "Have this on the house," she pushed one towards him before taking a sip of her own.

"I…I'm sorry, Mrs Harvelle." John said, whirling the bourbon around the glass in his hand. "I can't begin to…"

"Stop it." Ellen said, and John knew she had seen his embarrassment. "John, the succubus had no sense of imagination, she impersonated me for every guy passing through here. You've got no reason to apologise to me…" Ellen inclined her head. "And I'm not going to tell Billy if you don't."

"You won't?" John looked up at her through his too-long hair and for a strange moment realised he was giving Ellen the same look that Sammy gave him whenever he needed his father to cover up for him to his brother.

"Hell, no." Ellen laughed. "The succubus has been my project, you're Bill's friend. I never meant for the two to cross." She reached for his hand. "Seriously, John. I'm not going to hold it against you. The nights are lonely enough for you hunters without me making it more awkward for you."

"Ellen, I…" John's voice was thick and he needed to clear his throat again. "Thank you." He said, pulling the gown closer around his shoulders. "I'm really sorry, I know sorry doesn't begin to cover it…"

"John." Ellen poured him a second glass of bourbon. "You're only sorry for yourself. I take no embarrassment from this little encounter." She took another sip from her own glass. "And while I'm a little light-headed from the kill and the drink," she looked John deep in the eye and he felt that she was scrutinising his very soul. "In another place, another time…perhaps, perhaps it might have been real."

John raised his hand, wanted her to stop. He ground his teeth and shook his head. "Don't. Please don't pity me, Ellen." He took the gown off his shoulders and handed it over to her, leaving his bourbon untouched on the bar. Even though it was some ungodly time of night, John felt a strong pull to go to his sons, to go to them and warn them off this kind of life and roadhouses filled with God-knows-what bat-shit-crazy succubi, just so he could spare them this butt-clenching, skin-crawling, bollock-shrinking kind of embarrassment.

"'Night, Mrs Harvelle. I'll see you around."

"'Night, Mr Winchester. Not if I see you first."


End file.
